Category: Health and Fitness

This is an adaptation of a recipe from the “4 Ingredient” series created & compiled by Kim McCosker & Rachael Bermingham. One of the books in the series is specifically for the gluten intolerant (I’m not, I just choose variety in my diet) and I had a play (as I usually do) with the ingredients. It was a ‘Date Loaf’ recipe and I halved the ingredients because I simply didn’t have enough dates. It’s on page 60 if you decide you’d like to check out the original recipe. Here’s my version (and remember, it’s halved): 

Ingredients:

190gm dates, goji berries & natural sultanas (any dried fruit without sulphur dioxide added – preservative code 220)

¾-1 cup boiling water

heaped tablespoon of cacao powder

½-¾ cup GF self raising flour

Method:

Throw the dried fruit into a metal or heatproof glass bowl and add the boiling water. Cover and soak overnight.

Preheat oven to 160ºC. Mix the cacao and flour well into the soaked dried fruit then pour into greased (with coconut oil!) and lined loaf tin. Bake for approximately 45 minutes.

Notes:

The original recipe called for flaked almonds to ‘top’ the loaf prior to baking, and while I didn’t really want to do this, I considered throwing chopped walnuts (or the like) into the mixture…that would’ve tasted great and added more texture. In the photo, it appears that I’ve sprinkled desiccated coconut over the ‘slab’ but it’s actually psyllium husks! Thanks to my current obsession with fibre, I ended up lightly sprinkling about a dessert spoon of them over the top instead of the almonds. Desiccated coconut would probably taste better and one ‘problem’ with psyllium is that you need to increase your water intake or they may do the opposite of what one might expect – and actually bind you up!

Ingredients:

2-3 cups cooked GF macaroni/pasta

4-5 cups lightly steamed veggies (I used broccoli, cauliflower, carrot, zucchini & asparagus)

3 tablespoons butter/coconut oil

1 onion, diced

3 tablespoons cornflour

1½-2 cups milk (I used rice milk so less is better because it’s watery)

1 cup grated cheese

½ cup almond meal

¼ cup grated parmesan

¼ cup grated cheese

Method:

Preheat oven to 180°C. Melt butter/coconut oil in saucepan and sauté onion until tender.  Remove from heat. Add cornflour and combine. Gradually add milk, whisking in between each addition until smooth. Return to heat and stir continuously until sauce boils and thickens then stir through grated cheese until melted. In a large (1.5 litre, e.g.) ovenproof dish, combine the pre-cooked pasta & veggies, stirring through the cheese sauce mixture. Top with half of the combined cheeses, then sprinkle over the almond meal, finishing with the last of the cheeses. Bake for 30 minutes until bubbling and golden. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.

Notes:

Since I am a blasé cook with abnormal nutrition preferences, I often mess around with ingredients and amounts. I prefer much more vege than ‘complex carb’ so where the original recipe asked for 3 cups of pasta & 4 cups of veg, I chose to use 2 and 5 respectively. But I think this recipe would work well as a plain vegetable bake – scrap the past altogether for more nutrient density!

The poorest decision I made was in my choice of milk – which wasn’t really a choice, because I don’t buy cow’s milk. I had to use my rice milk and this proved too watery (especially with the extra fluid from the veggies). If you choose to use rice milk as well, I’d recommend increasing the flour and cheese amounts in the sauce rather than reducing the milk content, or you won’t have enough sauce in which to coat the veggies & pasta. You could also try adding a little mustard powder or cayenne pepper to the sauce if you like it, since it seemed a touch bland to me….but nothing that a touch of Himalayan salt wouldn’t fix!

Ingredients

125g butter – or coconut oil, as I used

2 tbsp maple syrup

¾ cup rice flour

¼ almond meal

1 cup oats

1 cup dessicated coconut

½ cup sugar – I used dextrose (powdered glucose) but rapadura is preferred

2 tbsp water

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Method
Preheat oven to 175 deg C. Grease or line two baking trays. Melt the butter and maple syrup together in a saucepan over a low heat. Mix together the flour, oats, coconut, almond meal and sugar in a bowl. Stir the water and the bicarbonate of soda into the butter and syrup mixture, then add it to the dry mixture, stirring thoroughly. Once combined, spoon mixture into balls. Place them on the baking trays, spaced well apart and flatten (with spatula/back of spoon/clean fingers!) Bake for about 15 minutes, or until golden. Cool on wire wracks. Enjoy!
Makes about 10-15 biscuits.

My Notes

I rarely follow recipes to a ‘T’ so play around with the composition of your dry ingredients (esp. the almond meal & flour) if you like. I almost always put less sugar in than a recipe asks for (the original recipe I used here called for ¾cup) because I am continually ‘training’ my tastebuds away from ‘Sweet’. The dextrose (glucose) I use is half as sweet as normal sugar because there is no fructose present, however the processing required to create dextrose is less than ideal. I’d also try to use organic ingredients first, where possible.

Ingredients

½ cup coconut oil

½ cup+ powdered cacao

Your choice of sweetener – fine dry ingredient, e.g. caster sugar or liquid, e.g. maple syrup, to taste. (I’ve used dextrose & manuka honey & had varying degrees of success with both!)

Method:

Place oil in a saucepan on the lowest possible heat, and when liquefied, stir in cacao, then your sweetener. If a dry ingredient (eg caster sugar), stir until it has dissolved, but be careful not to spend too much time over heat or it will begin to thicken, and become too syrupy.

Place baking paper in a flat dish and pour the mixture in. Set in the freezer anywhere from 3-15 minutes, depending how thick the ‘block’ is. Remove and ‘smash’ into bit sized pieces!

My Notes:

SO many ideas! I have played around with this basic recipe so much – had some amazing wins and some still-edible-losses.

If the mixture seems too runny (as I have thought in the past) I simply add more cacao (richer taste again) or almond meal, or dessicated coconut….some dry ingredient. I even added soaked dates once and made a thick fudge-type chocolate (which didn’t hold its shape so well). Natural peppermint flavour or vanilla essence work well too.

If you want it to look better you can also use moulds. I haven’t bought any specific chocolate moulds, but my old heart-shaped silicone ice cube trays I got from Ikea years ago worked at treat…and because the coconut oil melts quite quickly, there’s no need to ‘grease’ the moulds: the chocolate will slide out quite easily after a few minutes out of the freezer (unless it’s winter).

The ‘deeper’ the mould, the more time required to set, but you could also try popping something in …the ‘middle’. For example, while I haven’t yet tried it, I’m thinking (coz I LOVE Lindt Blueberry Dark Chocolate) of immersing a blueberry into each of those heart-shaped moulds one day. I’ll let you know how that goes….